Evaluating the performance of hearing -impaired children on the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-Nonverbal Scale (KABC -NV)

Abstract

Some studies have indicated that the Nonverbal Scale of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (KABC-NV) has features which would make it ideal for use with hearing impaired youngsters. Despite this fact, and despite the recommendation of the test authors to use this scale when testing a hearing impaired child, there is a lack of appropriate norms for using this test with this population. When a child does not fit within the demographics of the population used to norm a test, the measure may be invalid, and the score not a true measure of the child's functioning. The current study compared the performance of 27 hearing impaired youngsters (all ten years of age) with the performance of the normative sample described in the manual as well as another hearing impaired group involved in previous research. The purpose was to determine if the KABC-NV functions in the same way with the study sample as with these other populations. Correlations between performance on the KABC-NV and demographic variables such as gender, amount of hearing loss, and most recent IQ scores were performed. Performance on the KABC-NV correlated significantly with IQ score, and was not statistically different from the same correlation in the normative sample. Although most of the correlations were the same as those in the normative data, Hand Movements had a higher correlation with the entire scale than it does with the normative sample. Hand Movements, Triangles, and Spatial Memory had significantly higher correlations with each other than they did with the normative sample. Compared to a previous hearing impaired sample, the current sample performed significantly higher on three of the subtests: Hand Movements, Matrix Analogies, and Photo Series. They also performed significantly higher on the entire scale. Compared to the normative sample, the study sample obtained lower scores on all five subtests, although only Spatial Memory and Photo Series were significant. In the current sample, boys performed significantly higher than girls on previous IQ measures. The data support the idea that the KABC-NV is an appropriate measure for use with this population, but the data also indicate that separate norms should be developed for use with a hearing impaired population. ^